There are at least 12 good definitions for coaching. The most interesting, we believe, is the original use of the word coach – a vehicle that gets you from one point to another.

Combining all these definitions, coaching is essentially the provision of a supportive relationship, using a developmental process that enables people to achieve the results they set themselves.

Some of the concepts and features of coaching include:

• Awareness - insight into your own behaviour, in terms of the language and processes used.
• Freedom of Expression - courageous conversations and often intimate dialogue on sensitive issues.
• Practices - in order to further expand awareness and facilitate change.
• Goal setting - Inspiring, realistic and specific goals are crucial to the process.
• Assistance in designing a programme for change.
• Balance - between the various social, economic, spiritual etc. demands in life.
• Empowerment - the development of clarity and a sense of fulfillment.
• Results - objectively measurable outcomes are inherent in coaching.

You can find a variety of definitions for coaching at this link:
http://www.google.co.za/search?hl=en&lr=&oi=defmore&defl=en&q=define:Coaching

the products of coaching

In essence, the products of coaching are:

• Long-Term Excellence Performance
  Clients meet and sustain high objective standards agreed upon during coaching.
• Self-Correction
  Good coaching empowers the client to independently observe and modify behaviour in accordance with the competencies required, thus not creating dependency.
• Self-Generation
  Good coaching creates and establishes the enduring ability to learn, unlearn and re-learn.

The above Products of Coaching are extracted from Coaching – Evoking Excellence in Others , by James Flaherty - one of the most definitive voices in coaching and the .

For a full list of Benefits of Coaching, for individuals and organisations, or for information on the business case for coaching please contact us.

selecting a coach

Many coaches are able to combine the above aspects into some semblance of coaching. Beware that you are not merely getting a teacher and their techniques.

A good coach has a number of professional credentials as well as important personal traits.

Professionally, check the following in selecting a coach:

• Coaching qualifications relevant to your needs
• An appropriate level of coaching experience, relevant to your needs
• References of previous clients and coaching success stories
• Membership of professional bodies
• Supervision – whereby the coach is engaged in neutral, continuing professional development
• A structured approach and a wide range of tools and techniques

Personally, check for the following in selecting a coach - the first two are especially important:

• Relationship building - It's imperative that you trust, respect and have rapport with your coach
• Self-awareness and self-knowledge - Ensure the coach has done their own developmental work
• Listening skills - Active listing includes empathy and questioning skills
• The ability to challenge - safe, yet courageous feedback is a powerful coaching instrument
• The ability to facilitate profound and self generating insight

For assistance with selecting a coach, for yourself or your organisation, please contact us.

aspiral's coaching model

Coaching, in a nutshell, is based on three simple steps:

• Awareness - status or reality
• Goal setting - destination
• Programme design - process

With these steps as a framework, Aspiral's coaching is based on James Flaherty's Integral Coaching, with a added emphasis on assessment as a powerful self-awareness tool.

Integral Coaching

One fundamental premise of Integral Coaching is that

In other words, a stimulus-response management approach towards people's behaviour is not effective or sustainable. This approach requires increasing sanction and reward and thus creates dependency, as well as makes false assumptions regarding what humans are.

Alternatively,

Again, put differently, this means that our behaviour follows from what we perceive, or what we are aware of.

Integral Coaching refers to this concept as our Structure of Interpretation , which is influenced by the language we use and the practices we partake in.

The above diagram, from Flaherty's Coaching - Evoking Excellence in Others , illustrates how the coach/client relationships operates.

	Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.
	Aldous Huxley

As the client accepts and owns this structure of interpretation, so the realisation that this pattern is mutable starts to surface. This is a crucial and delicate stage of coaching, and it is for this reason that Aspiral advocate's spending meaningful time in the assessment and self awareness stage. Each client is a unique combination of language, processes, patterns and practices and the interplay thereof. Aspiral's makes use of powerful assessment and developmental tools to facilitate a ‘deep awareness'.

In this way coach and client are able to resist the ‘attraction of action' , or the temptation of a solution, and by resisting, empower the client with new choices of interpretation and ultimately behaviour.

Once this stage has been reached and the client begins to internalise this new found awareness, the real goal setting and programme design can begin. Depending on the issue at hand the types of coaching conversation may vary in focus and duration.

Yet, as t he client's goals and requirements will determine the shape and duration of the programme, it is important to remember that individuals are unique and each coaching programme is designed accordingly. Each individual works at a different pace and has a different starting point and learning style.